I am trying to find a decent online Texas Hold 'Em poker game(for fun only), and I keep running into the same problem-Newbies going all in at the start. There will be 6 to 9 at the table, and before the fourth person has put some coinage on the table some idiot will go all in, and the other idiots(thinking “I’ve got just as good a chance as anyone else!”) do the same. The few of us who actually know how to play drop out, the hand is over, and it starts all over again. I just sat through seven hands in a row where I never got a chance to play because of these Russian Roulette morons.
Are there any online poker games where this won’t happen as often?
every Thursday at 9 pm central there about 9-13 of us Dopers playing a free game. I have been playing about a year and half and I have yet to see anyone go all in on the first hand. Takes about hour 15 minutes to finish. come join us. good conversation. And highly competitive. We occasionally have a game on Saturday nights too. We play like it is real money.
I’ll try to make it-sounds like fun.
Has anyone else come across this problem in the online poker rooms?
For the vast majority of play money games/free rolls, it’s endemic. Many of the freerolls I’d have fun in on Stars before Black Friday were exactly like that, especially if the player was from E. Europe.
The SDMB group on Thursdays (occasional Saturdays) isn’t like that at all. Come join us! It’s lots of fun. We use AOL messenger to chat, rather than Stars’s utility.
This is the sad truth of “free” or “for fun” games.
Unless losing actually hurts, there’s always people that will play crazy.
Czarcasm, If you want to join us, and I hope you do, you just need to do a little prep work. If you do have have PokerStars, download it. Mental Guy has to give a you a code to join his Poker club so contact him via PM and then get instructions from him. And as Ghosty said, we chat via a group chat with AOL AIM, so if you want to chat, mock others play, and generally be part of a Bull Session, make sure you have AIM.
And Mental Guy, has a google spreadsheet so we know Doper name, Poker Star name, AIM handle, etc. It would help if you filled that out.
Hope to see you Thursday. 10 PM EASTERN TIME!
And anyone reading this is welcome too!
Slight hijack, I find this is endemic to most games with hail-Mary-esque mechanics built in when no one is playing for real stakes. I used to play spades online a decent amount. It’s amazing how many people would go blind- (AKA double-)nil because they were losing by a lot. Never mind that if you were playing for money, you would be risking 200 points should you get set. Blind-nil is supposed to be a strategic play when everyone bidding before you has bid almost, equal to, or more than the 13 maximum tricks, and your partner (or even your opponents) are highly likely to be able to cover your hand from taking any tricks. Plus, if you are the last bidder, your opponent bidding before you might underbid just to avoid the risk of you bidding blind-nil and making it. (Better you make only 100 point nil for them than the 200 points from a blind nil.)
The blind-nil as a hail-Mary is just annoying and removes the strategic component of the game.
Granted, this doesn’t just happen online, but at least when playing in meatspace I can express my sardonicism much more succinctly and maybe convince the person that what they are doing is ridiculous
Playing Devil’s advocate: it’s not such a horrendous strategy in the right hands.
One of the strategies of primarily online professional poker players is to maximize the number of hands played in an hour (if you’re actually better than the competition, more hands = more money).
The strategy is to sign up for multiple low cost tables and pull early all-ins. Sure, you’ll end up losing most of them. But in the few cases you don’t, you end up with large chip counts and can then adjust accordingly.
Doesn’t work so well for cash games vs tournaments (sit-in or multi-tables). It’s definitely one of the big differences between playing live and playing online, at least professionally vs recreationally.
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